


All Life In One Day

by zeldadestry



Category: Actor RPF, Hip Hop RPF
Genre: Community: contrelamontre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-23
Updated: 2006-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-27 07:50:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eyes like that were windows; he saw everything and if a person wanted, they could see it all reflected back to them and there was too much in there to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Life In One Day

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE NOTE: Absolutely no disrespect intended. If you think it would offend or upset you to read a work of fiction wherein Tupac Shakur (or Omar Epps, for that matter) appears AS A CHARACTER, please do not read. Thank you.
> 
> written for the contrelamontre 'letters' challenge 
> 
> Omar Epps has been quoted as saying he thought Tupac Shakur was 'touched by god'  
> The movie they were in together is 'Juice'.  
> The Talib Kweli line comes from the Reflection Eternal song 'For Women'  
> 2Pac has a song called 'God Bless the Dead'.  
> the 'twelve year old girl' refers to Brenda, the title character in 2Pac's song 'Brenda's Got a Baby'

No, he doesn’t believe the conspiracy theories, not really. This time of year, though, he gets to thinking.

Late nights in the studio, Pac laying down the tracks, and anyone who saw him like that, telling the stories, first-hand, like they were his own, like he’d lived them, lived it all, like he was that twelve year old girl, raped and abused and abandoned, anyone who saw that would know he was no ordinary man. A person couldn’t forget that presence, couldn’t ignore it.

The ratio of beauty, that’s what Omar calls it. There is a mysterious, impossible definition of beauty, and no one can take the measure of it. Who else had eyes like that? It was like his eyes were too big for his face, for anyone’s face. It was like he saw too much, but also like anyone looking at him could see too much of what was inside him. Eyes like that were windows; he saw everything and if a person wanted, they could see it all reflected back to them and there was too much in there to see. So he liked to look at Pac when Pac couldn’t look back, late nights in the studio.

“You got rhymes?” Pac said. Everything about him was always a dare. You think you can take me on? Take me on. I ain’t afraid of you. Ain’t afraid of nobody. “You got rhymes? Lay it down, motherfucker. Let’s hear what you got to say.”

But he wanted to be a spectator. He just wanted to watch Pac.

“You got somethin’ to say?” Pac was on it, then, like a preacher, or a lunatic raving down on the corner, in the alley. “You best say it, motherfucker. You think you need to get permission? No one’s gonna give it to you. You have to take it.”

Someone was slapping his cheek. He had fallen asleep on the couch. It was late and they had to be back on set early the next morning. He reached his hand out and grabbed at Pac’s wrist. “Stop it, man.” Pac’s other hand pressed against his cheek, warm and rough, the thick heel of his palm, god damn, but it was like he could still feel that touch. He looked up slowly, like he was still sleeping, like it was a dream. Those eyes staring down at him, yes, still like a dream. There wasn’t a place for eyes like those, they scared him. There was something broken there, passion so deep it could only end bad. “Orpheus,” he muttered.

The hand fell away from his face, and Pac looked, what was that look, maybe a little scared, but mostly resigned, like a fortune teller had long ago shown him the day and date of his fall. “Man, you’re trippin’. All mythological and shit. A fuckin’ intellectual when you’re high.”

But he couldn’t be remembering it right. Pac wasn’t obsessed with death yet, didn’t claim he longed for it. All that shit would come later. Omar would wonder about it sometimes. Was that why you were so angry, Pac? Did you already know how it would all go down? Did you hate the world for the unfair fate it had ready for you? But Omar couldn’t have seen all that back then, when they first knew each other, could he? He’d known Pac before the first shooting, before the trial. It didn’t seem to be the same man who came out on the other side of all that. Except for the eyes. God damn, why did those eyes still seem to be with him? Haunted eyes, and now they haunted him, and that wasn’t right. It was R.I.P., but where was the rest and where was the peace?

That night, Pac just looking down at him, the rest of the crew shuffling out of the studio, and Pac was saying, “Let’s get outta here.”

Crashing at Pac’s place, the place he was staying, blankets and pillows strewn on the floor and Pac offered him the couch, but it was actually more comfortable down in the pile of bedding. He wasn’t even coming down, not really. A hit there, a little bit more to drink, making sure not to take too much, make himself sick, no, just enough to keep the buzz on, keep himself like this, sleepwalker, everything was like a dream and how the fuck were they going to make it through work tomorrow? Crash in the trailers when they weren’t needed. It would work itself out. Why was he worrying about tomorrow? Pac fell down on the floor next to him, nudged him in the belly with his fingers, saying, “Hey, move over. Give me some space so I ain’t flat against the wall.”

Omar moved as directed, nestled himself again into his comforter. He flipped over to lie on his belly, his head turned to the right, facing Pac. Pac lay down beside him, turned his head so that they were facing each other. They looked into each other’s eyes and Omar didn’t know what he was seeing, had to close his eyes at what he saw. Heaven, he thought. Hell was there, too. One would flash and then the other, so quick they became the same. “They say,” he mumbled.

“They say what?”

“Some men are touched by God.”

Pac laughed, slapped him in the ribs. “You are so high. There ain’t nobody like that.”

Omar opened his eyes again. Pac had long lashes that curved upwards like a girl’s. But there it was again, there was too much there in his expression. There was a battle, he could see it. Omar had his path. He knew where he was going, knew he was going to be successful, make something of himself. But Pac would build it up to tear it down, addicted to struggle, wasn’t that what people said when a man couldn’t just let a good thing be, when he had to keep pushing? Omar wasn’t scared to rap, to take all the things he wrote and put it out into the world. He would do it because he wanted to, not because he had to, was compelled, possessed. He wasn’t scared. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe it was being scared that got a man to live like Pac, all life in one day, rising each morning like it was your last, like you’d disappear by sunset. Omar didn’t live like that, didn’t know if he could, but he was still a man. “I’m gonna go my own way,” he said. “I don’t care where anybody else goes.”

“Whatever, whatever. Sleep it off, man.” Pac’s eyes were closed now, his lips slightly parted.

Something like that. The night was something like that. It shouldn’t be this way, everything that happened, the way it all ended, that shouldn’t change how it was. But it does. He can’t remember it right. He feels now like the first time he met Pac, even then, he saw the death wish. But they were just kids. It wasn’t serious like that. They were kids, having fun, hanging out, dreaming about being stars, they were in a fuckin movie! But what kid could write a song like ‘Brenda’? So they were kids, they weren’t kids, Pac was right, whatever, whatever.

This time of year comes along and no, no he doesn’t believe the stories, but sometimes when he’s tired, when his mind wanders, like today, he can see it. It’ll come one day, a phone call, an email, maybe a letter. Yeah, a letter, because though he won’t know the name or the address, he’ll recognize the handwriting. And he’ll go, somewhere in Georgia maybe, or one of the Carolinas, some little town out in the country, he’ll go there, and there’ll be a big house, dogs running out to meet him when he drives up, white house with columns in the front, and those trees, he doesn’t know what they’re called, but the branches and leaves swoop down in green arches, spanning from the sky to the earth, the earth to the sky, and he’ll park the car and the dogs will circle him, barking, and there’ll be someone at the door, behind the screen, and then the screen will slowly swing open and he’ll see those eyes again. And all the stories will have been true, all the theories about the number seven, and the Makaveli album will be proved. And those infamous autopsy pictures of the body, the skull, missing crescent moon portions of flesh, they will be proved false, except that maybe, for just a second, he will believe in both the death and that there could be a resurrection. Some men are touched by God. There won’t be words, he can’t find them, or even imagine what they would be. There will just be those eyes again, fixed on his own. And he will understand then, what he could not when he was younger, how it is possible to be blessed in one moment, damned in the next. He will understand, and more than that, when he meets those eyes again, he will see that the battle is done. No one has won, no one has lost, no one is bleeding. It’s just over. Those eyes, still the same, heaven, hell, both there, woven into one.

Someone’s knocking at the door, and Omar jolts on the couch, jars himself back into consciousness. “Mr. Epps? They need you on set.”

“Yeah,” he cries out, voice hoarse. “I’ll be right there.” He scrubs at his face, his eyes; his sight is blurry. He wishes there were a grave. He always has. He might bring flowers, or something. He could leave a note, bury it in the dirt above the ashes. He could write a note, burn it, and sprinkle the ashes over the ground. The feeling would remain. If it is written, it is so. He pulls a blank sheet off from the back of his script. Stands there, tapping his pen against his bottom lip.

There’s knocking again. “Mr. Epps? They need you now.”

It comes out because there is no time to think. He has to go, and he has to leave a tribute, right now, to the man, to everything the man still ignites in him, right now, while he’s feeling it, he has to put it down. God bless the dead, he writes, and when he has done it, he shakes his head, tears suddenly appearing, though they do not fall. God bless the dead, he writes again, and then a third time, in bigger, thicker letters: God bless the dead. I fucking miss you.

It’s like he’s admitting it for the first time. Ten fucking years, ten years, and he’s still trying to face it.

“God bless the dead,” he whispers, touches himself once, a fist to his heart. He brings his hand back in front of him, spreads his fingers, opens his hand up, drops a kiss into his own palm and then presses it against the paper. He’ll send it to Afeni Shakur. If anyone would know where it should go, she would.

What’s the Talib Kweli line? _Life and death are small on the whole in many ways._

Heaven and hell, life and death, whatever, whatever.

It’s just unfinished. It’ll always be unfinished, he’ll be reliving this ten years from now, the whole process, wishing for Pac’s life, while at the same time desperate to finally accept his death.

It’s just one of those wounds that can’t heal. Everyone has them. Everyone has to live with them.

He’s still here, and he has to get back to work.


End file.
